World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 79

What is the law of Karma? The law of Karma is not an ethical law, it is not a moral law. It is not, as in the popular understanding, reducible to the tenet that doing good brings good consequences and doing evil brings evil. It cannot be so, because the values of good and evil are relative. One man's good may be another person's evil. As we saw with the essence of work, Karma is an evolutionary law. Karma exists to ensure that our will falls in line with the will of the Lord. This is the very movement of the evolution. The will of the Lord is the will of the One. The law of karma seen by our instrumental nature, by the prakritic experience, stems from the lack of our consciousness of oneness, our knowledge of identity. It is the ignorance of the truth that there is only one Being and its one Becoming; it is to that Being that all action is directed, and by that Being that all action is done. It is the veil of this ignorance that yields karma, crookedness of intent, causing suffering and pain to the instrumental nature, Prakriti. Prakriti bears the consequences of this ignorance leading it even unconsciously to seek union with Purusha/Isha within. This is the meaning of karma. If (and when we are identified in consciousness with the Lord in being and becoming, so that His will alone works in and through us, irrespective of the nature of action, there would be no suffering, there would be only delight. This is the delight of the instrument in its instrumentation (prakriti), and the delight of enjoyer in its enjoyment (purusha). That is what the teaching of Karma in the yogic sense amounts to here.
We may further consider how are we to understand experientially this assertion that action does not cleave to a person. As with the first line of the Upanishad, this assertion may also be taken as an invitation to a meditation. This is an invitation to contemplate the fact that there is something in us that is untouchable by any phenomenal experience. Interestingly, it is with this invitation that the Bhagavad Gita also begins. It starts with Arjuna's dejection, what is termed by it, Arjuna vishada yoga. Witnessing the opposing armies arrayed for battle, Arjuna refuses to fight. He argues, that it is an evil war firstly because, all war is evil and secondly, because it is a civil war, in which what he is required to do opposes the very foundations of dharma that hold civilization together. It offends the basic principles that he has been taught, respect for teachers and elders, amity with relatives and kinspeople. Instead, he is required to take arms against all these well known and respected people. Arjuna can see no good coming from this. If he loses, he will be shamed and if he wins, he will be ridden by guilt for the rest of his life. There will be no enjoyment, only suffering. Krishna's answer to Arjuna takes us through the mazes of right and wrong and the intricacies of yoga, but his very first response to Arjuna asks the latter to consider who he thinks he will kill or who he thinks will kill him. He points out to him that he hasn't even been born, neither have the others he sees and that, from another vantage, all these people have already died, driven into his jaws as the immeasurable Time Spirit, arisen for destruction. He thus enjoins on him first, to know
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